No Cocaine for Shoerlock Holmes?

As a fan of the Sherlock Holmes character, something about the recent Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes irked me. It was not the alleged use of dark arts to throw off the deductive reasoning skills of the great detective. It was not the occasional slow moments in the story where Holmes and Watson had no idea where the plot was. It was not the shoehorning of Irene Adler as Holmes' love interest despite having already bested him, married someone else, and got the heck out of his life. It was not even the welcome return to Dr. Watson being a competent partner and foil to Holmes instead of a bumbling sidekick. No, my complaint is more minor.

Where was the cocaine?

When I was a child reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories about the brilliant detective, it was not his intellect or acute attention to detail that helped him solve cases that stuck in my mind. I figured that solving the cases was the prerequisite to being a great fictional detective. I mean, what detective is famous for NOT solving anything? Besides, reruns of Columbo and Perry Mason also had its titular characters solving difficult cases with their intellect and attention to detail so those features were not exactly unique.

No, it was the faults that made these detective characters interesting. Columbo looked like a bum. Perry Mason was more lawyer than human. Holmes had a cocaine addiction that he would partake in when bored and lacking stimulating cases. Giving Holmes the addiction helped show the strain of having a massive intellect with the accompanying need to remain stimulated. The addiction makes him more human complete with flaws people can understand. The film version of Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) shows hims suffering from boredom as he seems to go under the influence of some narcotics that includes testing out an innovative way to silence firearms while his neighbor Watson is tending to a patient. But the actual cocaine usage is suspiciously removed, which makes Holmes appear quirky instead of damaged.

Cocaine was legal in 19th century England, which adds to the authentic setting to the stories and film. Nowadays the illegality of cocaine does make it more difficult to incorporate into the character since the supposed impressionable youth may get influenced to do the same. I am curious why Sherlock Holmes is denied cocaine when his modern day incarnation Dr. House got to eat Vicodin like candy for five seasons. And once he got off it, the show began to meander.